1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to a hybrid pointing device and, more particularly, to a hybrid pointing device including an optical navigation module configured to sense a gesture of at least one finger and a pointing module configured to sense a movement of the hybrid pointing device relative to a surface.
2. Description of the Related Art
For a conventional pointing device, e.g. an optical mouse and a trackball mouse, a pointer shown on a display of a host is controlled by a relative displacement between the pointing device and a surface. The pointing device generally includes two buttons (left and right buttons) for activating commands associated with the movement of the pointer on the display. Usually, when a user wants to execute a program, drag an icon, modify a picture, etc., the user moves the pointer on the display and points the pointer on a particular graphic user interface (GUI) then presses at least one button to activate commands. To enhance the applications of conventional pointing devices, some pointing devices are provided with more than two buttons; therefore, the user may define particular functions activated by pressing the additional buttons or by pressing several buttons simultaneously associated with moving the pointer on the display.
However, too many buttons integrated on a pointing device may confuse the user since the user can only operate the buttons with at most five fingers one time. For example, when the user tries to press as many buttons as he or she can, the user may hardly move the pointing device to move the pointer on the display.
There is another kind of pointing device which applies an optical sensor module in replace of the conventional mouse. The optical sensor module is configured to emit light to the finger and receive the reflected light from the finger for sensing a movement of the finger thereby controlling the pointer on the display. This kind of pointing device is compact and the sensing area is relatively small, which is disadvantaged in low resolution, hard to precisely control the pointer, hard to move the pointer fast, etc.
Besides, the aforementioned conventional mouse is difficult in controlling the pointer to move very straight toward a direction, to move along a particular path, to draw a fair arc or to have an accurate fine movement due to the unstable operation of human hands and fingers.
Recently, a kind of pointing device having a capacitive touch module (CTM) or a resistive touch module (RTM) is provided. The CTM or RTM is applied to sense the touching motion of fingers for activating commands. More particularly, the CTM or RTM includes a sensor array uniformly distributed over a sensing area. When the fingers properly touch on the sensing area, the touching motion will cause an electrical variation of the sensor array that indicates the touched position on the sensor array. However, to ensure correct detection of fingers, the whole CTM or RTM has to maintain in function-well condition. Once a portion of the CTM or RTM is failed, the movement of fingers cannot be detected correctly. Furthermore, fingers have to substantially touch the CTM or RTM strong enough to be sensed by the pointing device. All of these properties limit the application of the technologies.
Thus, it is important to provide a pointing device that may activate commands in various ways without using buttons and move precisely for better control.